{"id":290594,"date":"2026-02-18T22:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T22:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/290594\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T22:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T22:19:08","slug":"feds-bowman-still-concerned-about-labor-market-says-recent-jobs-report-a-bit-strange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/290594\/","title":{"rendered":"Fed&#8217;s Bowman still concerned about labor market, says recent jobs report &#8216;a bit strange&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-v-4026719d=\"\">Fed Governor Michelle Bowman is an interesting case as she turned dovish last year as she as being considered for Fed Chair. She hasn&#8217;t abandoned that position but highlighted something that many in the market are puzzled by.<\/p>\n<p data-v-4026719d=\"\">A number of US labor market indicators have shown weakness lately but then last Wednesday there was a strong non-farm payrolls report. That initially triggered a hawkish response in the market but since then we&#8217;ve seen that unwind. Bowman is among the skeptics and said she remains concerned about the labor market. She called the latest one &#8220;a bit strange&#8221; and highlighted softness in other indicators.<\/p>\n<p data-v-4026719d=\"\">The thing is, that stance raises the stakes for the next round of data as it would be hard to maintain that stance if unemployment falls further to 4.2%.<\/p>\n<p data-v-4026719d=\"\">I tend to agree with Bowman but it&#8217;s really tough to read the jobs market and economy right now. The AI changes have everyone on edge about a jobs cliff. The JOLTS job openings report has fallen to 6542 from 7658 in March.<\/p>\n<p data-v-4026719d=\"\">At the moment, there is no really telling but I continue to believe that the US running a 6% deficit to GDP along with deregulation, a tax cut and equities near a high isn&#8217;t going to cause a jobs-led recession. Maybe we get the AI bubble popping or equities take a rout and then we see the layoffs but I just don&#8217;t see it starting right away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fed Governor Michelle Bowman is an interesting case as she turned dovish last year as she as being&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-290594","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}